In my recently published book (Gender, Health & Healthcare – Ashgate, 2015), I discuss experience of health and the work of providing healthcare through the prism of gender. Much of the volume’s narrative is devoted to discussion of various features of health that in recent times has become constructed through bio-medicalised discourses. In one chapter of the book, however, I deliberately move away from ‘cure’ narratives to consider how gender is implicated in both the experience of incurable disease and its care, and highlight some of the research that draws out the dimension of gender in relation to dementia.

The demographic changes caused by the significant rise in human longevity have come to be a focus of concern amongst Western governments in relation to responding to the care needs of an ageing population. Images of infirmity, frailty, dependency and cognitive deterioration strongly influence negative cultural prescriptions associated with ageing and we are told that more than anything else ‘people fear both living and dying with advanced dementia’ (Downs, 2011). Because women on average live longer than men, they are more likely to be diagnosed with some form of dementia and are also more likely than men to be involved in caring for a partner or other family member with the condition (Lips, 2014). In the US, two thirds of those caring for dementia sufferers are women (Coston and Kimmel, 2013).Ageing is complex and not just biological with Segal (2013) reminding us that, whilst we think we age by nature, we are also aged by culture that in Western societies has an entrenched prejudice against ageing and old age. The growing levels of dementia and its characterisation as a ‘living death’ contribute to the perception that ‘ageing is a problem’. But and as Segal (2013) points out, though the incidence of dementia will accelerate in the oldest old age group, it will still not predominate. This is not the picture often presented in media discourses on ageing.

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We are researchers in gerontology and ageing across the life course, based at The Open University, UK, but blogging as individuals. The views expressed here do not necessarily represent the views of The Open University. The University takes no responsibility for any material on these pages.